


of course it's beastly when anybody dies

by suitablyskippy



Category: Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crossover, Crack Treated (Moderately) Seriously, Gen, Murderous Boarding School Hijinks, Pastiche, Unexpected Death Note Acquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 12:38:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5375474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been days since Gwendoline received attention of any kind, and in her silly selfish vanity she mistook the girls’ honest grief for the silence of a captive audience, thrilling to her every word. “Why,” she began, tossing golden curls back across her shoulder, “I remember when I was young, and Mother said I might have a kitten for my own – but then Father forbade it, and I cried for <i>days</i> as I mourned that kitten. It’s not quite the same as Alicia, of course, but—”</p><p>“I don’t care what anyone else says,” Darrell said, speaking up quite suddenly, “but if you don’t stop this minute, Gwen, I shall send you to Coventry for as long as I live.”</p><p>(Gwendoline had never been a good girl, nor a kind girl, and under present circumstances this seemed rather more unfortunate than ever.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	of course it's beastly when anybody dies

**Author's Note:**

> [I accidentally reread ‘First Term at Malory Towers’ all in one sitting the other day, and completely rekindled my long-standing, passionate love for Gwendoline. And for the record: of all the bizarre Gwen fics I immediately started planning, this is actually not the weirdest of the lot BY A VERY LONG WAY.]

 

The afternoon was dreadfully cold, and so Gwendoline had sniffled and moped and dolefully complained of her sore throat and weak lungs until Miss Maxwell hadn’t the patience to endure her any longer, and allowed her to sit out; and ‘out’ was where Gwendoline now sat, pleasantly bundled up on the sidelines in her scarf and mittens as the other girls charged around the lacrosse pitch, puffing out clouds of smoke with their cheeks glowing ruddy from the cold. 

A different girl might have found it dull to be excluded from all the fun of the game, but Gwendoline was satisfyingly preoccupied. She was warming her mittened hands with her breath and feeling sorry for herself – a pastime in which Gwendoline often indulged, yet the particular impulse for which changed from day to day. Today the cause was Alicia, who had remarked rather loudly over breakfast that she had overheard Mam’zelle Dupont complaining to Mrs Potts that Gwendoline’s last French comp. had been no better than the work of some of her firsties, and wasn’t it rotten of Mam’zelle, really, to compare those poor firsties to darling _Gwendoline_ — 

And thus was Gwendoline preoccupied when, all of a sudden, something thumped her soundly on the head. 

She cried out at once, loudly enough that anyone nearby would know she had been wronged. But the whoops and cries of the lacrosse game continued; the clashing of sticks didn’t pause for a moment. 

“That _hurt_ , you know,” Gwendoline said resentfully, in case the culprit lurked unseen in the gorse bushes at her back. She pressed one mittened hand to her fine golden hair and looked around her – but still, there was not a soul to be seen. She sat up straighter and raised her voice. “Who was that?” she demanded. “Come out, whoever you are, and show me who I shall be telling on!”

The edge of the lacrosse pitch was quite deserted. There was a little blot of black wedged between the thorny branches of the gorse bush, though, and she pinched its corner in her mittened fingers and tugged it free. 

It was a book. Gwendoline glanced about her again, sure that the other girls would be watching by now, pointing and laughing that she had fallen for whatever spiteful trick this might be: but they were attending only to the game. 

A wisp of unease stirred in Gwendoline’s thoughts – and not only because it displeased her to be thusly ignored. It wasn’t unusual for the other girls to prank her, of course, mean pigs as they all were; but it _was_ unusual for no one to witness the prank, or for no girl to pop out from the bushes afterwards with a sly grin on her face and cry out, “Hie, and didn’t we get you well, dear Gwendoline Mary!” 

And yet there was Alicia on the pitch, charging right at Betty with a wild war cry; and there was Darrell, crouched low and ready to meet her – and if they were all over there, while Gwendoline was alone over here, then what in the world had been the point of the prank? Or – suspicion settled into Gwendoline’s heart, where it had long since worn a nasty little furrow for itself – had the thump on the head been only the _beginning_ of a prank? Had the thump on the head been only a distraction, while the real prank came to the boil somewhere out of sight?

She looked back at the book that she had found. It was a little black exercise book, with a nonsensical title emblazoned in white on its cover, and its pages pristinely bare. Inside the front cover, there was printed a most curious slogan: _The person whose name is written in this book shall die_. 

“What a queer little thing,” Gwendoline said aloud to herself, turning it over in her hands. “All part of some horrid prank, I should think – one of the other girls must have dropped over here by accident. Perhaps I should save it for after the game, and ask about to see who might have missed it...”

And for an honest girl, a Malory Towers girl through and through, that would have been the end of the matter. But Gwendoline was not an honest girl. She was a selfish, mean-spirited girl, and no sooner had she scorned the notion of attempting to return the book to its rightful owner than her thoughts turned onto quite a different path. 

I shan’t return it, Gwendoline thought, as she rummaged in her overcoat pocket for a pencil – no, I shan’t! I shall teach them all a lesson – hiding their pranks from me, and always making fun of me, and thinking I can’t prank just as well as any of them can. Why, I shall use this book myself, and spoil whatever nasty little game they may have planned! 

And there on the first page of the book, Gwendoline took her pencil and printed _Alicia Johns_ in her untidy cursive. 

Nothing happened. Well, Gwendoline hadn’t thought it would; most likely there was a second part to the prank, perhaps a hidden compartment inside the cover – or perhaps the book had been intended only as a distraction, something to scare her witless while the _real_ prank was set into action—

A cry rose up from across the lacrosse pitch. A figure had stumbled, was falling. 

“Alicia! I say, Alicia! You took quite the tumble, are you—”

“Alicia!”

“ _Alicia_ – Miss Maxwell, come quick, oh, _do_ come quick—”

The grass was cold and wet and the ground was churned quite to mud in places, slippery with ice as well. Alicia wasn’t getting up. Clustered worriedly around her, the other girls made quite the tableau: kneeling, crouching, leaning over her – and all of them breathing smoke, all of them ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed in the misty, icy afternoon. 

Gwendoline tucked the book inside her coat. 

 

+++

 

No girls were allowed to visit in the San. that night. Darrell paced and paced, snapping at Mary-Lou for the slightest things, and it wasn’t long before sensible Sally took it upon herself to intervene. 

“You know what Alicia’s like – strong as an ox, and determined besides. So do buck up, Darrell! She’ll be back in the common room before you know it, bounding around like nothing ever happened.”

But oh, how little Sally knew! It was all Gwendoline could do to school the mean, vindictive pleasure from her features and pretend to wait in concern with the rest of them. 

Belinda poked her tousled head into the common room after a while, and reported that she had seen Mrs Grayling with Alicia’s parents, and all of them had been walking towards the San. 

“My parents came when all I had was appendicitis,” Sally said fiercely, “you must remember that, Darrell, this doesn’t mean—”

Gwendoline could contain herself no longer. She gathered her books and fled the room, and if any girl heard the squeak of muffled glee as she closed the door of their dormy behind her: well, surely they would take it for her tears. After all these years – how perfectly marvellous, to have beaten Alicia at her own horrid game! To have caught her in a prank and turned her own prank right back on her – and such a cruel, beastly prank it was as well! It jolly well served her right, Gwendoline thought, trying to hurt _her_ like that; it had jolly well taught her a lesson! 

Yes, Gwendoline was quite sure that Alicia had been served her just desserts, and not for a moment did it cross her selfish mind that what she had done was utterly wicked. 

She hung up her scarf and coat, and took off her mittens. The book she hid beneath a photograph of her father in her bottom drawer, and then she stood back up and saw what was before her – and she screamed, and screamed, and screamed. 

The dormy door crashed open. “Gwen, what in the world is the matter with you?” Darrell cried. 

“Do you,” stammered Gwendoline, through chattering teeth, “that creature, that _monster_ —”

“Dear Gwendoline Mary’s seen a mouse, I should think,” called someone from behind Darrell, and there was a general susurrus of disapproval from the common room. 

“Won’t you keep your fat mouth closed, Gwen?” Darrell said hotly. “Today isn’t the sort of day when you can just—”

“ _No_ ,” Gwendoline said passionately, though she felt her own heart might give out at any moment, “it’s there beside you, Darrell, you’re—” and then the creature’s terrible mouth broke wide into a terrible leer, and Gwendoline screamed once more. 

“There’s nothing there, Gwen,” said Sally, peering right through the thing’s dreadful leathery leg at the wall behind. “Did you see a shadow and take it for a spider again?”

“I’m telling you, it’s a monster! A real true monster,” cried Gwendoline, who had never been anything but a cowardly girl. She clasped her hands at her chest, staring up in beseeching horror. “Oh, if you are a devil, take one of the other girls instead; I can promise they are all far wickeder than I—”

But no sooner had this lie left Gwendoline’s mouth than a sound like a shot rang out through the dormy: Darrell’s hand across Gwendoline’s face, a slap so hard that it took a moment before the pain set in. “There’s nothing you like so much as attention, is there? Well, I shall give you some!”

“I mean it!” Gwendoline cried. She clutched her burning cheek, near tears. “Oh, Darrell, won’t you believe me? I mean it, I swear I do, I would swear it on anything you ask of me—”

But Gwendoline had cried wolf too many times before to be trusted now. Instead of sympathy, Darrell gave her a shove. It was a hard shove, and Gwendoline sat down, quite suddenly, on the edge of her bed. 

“Alicia is a good kind girl, and _that_ is why we all of us love her so; but you are neither good nor kind, and you have never been, Gwen, even when we gave you chance after chance. And you can’t stand knowing that we’re all upset about her, because you’re afraid we wouldn’t be upset if it were _you_ – if it were you to whom something awful had happened!”

The creature had cocked its dreadful head, for all the world as though it was listening in. Gwendoline began to cry. 

“And I can’t speak for the other girls,” said Darrell, bright-eyed with anger, “but do you know, Gwen, I shouldn’t think I would be! After all of this, I shouldn’t think I would be upset at all.” 

With those hot words, she pushed aside the girls clustered behind her and left the dormy. Sally cast a solemn look back before she followed; and the other girls began to follow too, and then at last the door was closed, and Gwendoline was alone with the ghastly creature that bobbed and leered in death’s-head white beneath the dormy ceiling. 

It opened its mouth, broad and fanged as a dog’s muzzle. “You’re the only one here as what can see me, Miss Lacey,” it remarked, with the lazy vowels of any common factory-hand, and Gwendoline fainted dead away. 

 

+++

 

Alicia’s family came to the school, her father and her mother in their winter greatcoats, and all of her brothers trailing miserably along behind like so many slow-footed, slump-shouldered ducklings. The girls watched from the window of North Tower, and a funny sort of picture they made: miniscule black figures in the cold, colourless morning, shrunken by the distance as they journeyed slowly up the long sweep of the drive. 

Her family came, and left, and by and by there was a funeral. Not all the girls were invited, of course, but Alicia’s mother said she knew that the North Tower girls had been Alicia’s ‘particular friends’, and so Gwendoline went along with all the rest one icy morning in December. She took along a bag of humbugs and sat beside Mary-Lou on the train, and they sucked in silence as the engines clanked and churned around them. 

There were parts of Alicia in a lot of the drawn white faces at the graveside: here her sharp eyes, there the brash jut of her chin. A queer sort of feeling passed through Gwendoline when the first rattle of dirt fell down, like a stomach-ache but at the same time like something quite different. It felt as though something seized her heart and held it, something huge – something too huge to think about: and so Gwendoline didn’t think about it at all. She was wearing her best winter coat, the black one with the shiny silver buttons and the collar she could turn up if she grew too cold, and she pushed her mittened hands into her pockets and breathed out clouds of smoke, watching the dirt rattle down, and down, and down. 

At her side, Mary-Lou was crying – quietly, into her hands. Probably Gwendoline should be crying too, she supposed; and, taking a deep breath, she summoned up a world where Alicia’s prank had gone off without a hitch, and where it was Gwendoline who now lay in state at the heart of the funeral, preserved forever at her most pale and tragically beautiful; and her mother and Miss Winter sobbed at her graveside, and her father wept too and admitted through his tears that he had always been wrong about her, and regretted all of it now beyond belief... 

The crowd at Alicia’s graveside began to sing. The hymn rose richly in the brisk Cornish air, and as their voices soared upwards Gwendoline’s tears rolled freely down her pale, pinched cheeks. 

After a little while, Mary-Lou’s hand tugged Gwendoline’s from its pocket and held it tight between them. Gwendoline thought of her own golden hair arrayed around her solemn, beautiful face on a silken pillow on display in her open coffin; and her heart felt as though it was shot quite exquisitely through, and she wept more painfully still. 

 

+++

 

Afterwards, though, on the train back to school, an odd certainty began to come over Gwendoline that Alicia would have thumbed her nose at the whole affair – called it all frightfully pi, and jeered at every last one of them for all the crying, and all the praying; and she would have stomped right through the sombre hush in her lacrosse boots, and set a whoopee cushion beneath the minister’s seat, and tossed a stink bomb into the choir stalls, and she wouldn’t have cared who knew she’d done it. 

Gwendoline thought of telling this to Mary-Lou, but Mary-Lou had been crying and praying with the rest of them, and probably wouldn’t have liked it; and anyway, Gwendoline was beginning to feel quite peculiar herself. Coming down with a cold, perhaps. Her stomach hadn’t felt proper since the graveside: as though it yawned open, as though some strange, colossal ache was rotting it deep inside, and for some odd reason it grew worse every time she thought of Alicia. 

Well, she would just have to speak to Matron when she returned to school, Gwendoline decided. Mavis had come down with something that was not quite the ‘flu only two weeks ago, after all; and it wouldn’t be jolly in the least to fall ill so near the Christmas hols.

 

+++

 

School was different after that. None of the other girls had the spirit to bother Gwendoline, which respite Gwendoline quite enjoyed for a while; but nor would any of the other girls pay attention to Gwendoline at all, too busy going about with their eyes and noses red from weeping, and turning down pudding even when it was rhubarb crumble with piping hot custard, and this state of affairs Gwendoline could endure for no longer than a week before it drove her to distraction. 

“I don’t see why everyone must make such a dreadful fuss about this,” she said peevishly one evening, after Mary-Lou had failed to offer her assistance in completing Gwendoline’s French prep., even after Gwendoline had hinted quite clearly several times at what she wanted from her – but Mary-Lou just stared woefully into the common room fire, wringing her thin little hands. “Of course it’s beastly when anybody dies, but must we all mope about it so?”

“We’re grieving our friend,” said Sally. Her hand was on Darrell’s shoulder, pressing firmly down to remind her of her place. 

“Well, yes, so am I,” Gwendoline replied, rather exasperated to be dealing with the obvious. “I’ve nightmares every night, you know – I’ve had hardly one decent night’s sleep since this whole mess began—” which was true, at least; visions of that floating, leathery beast grinned through her dreams, though she hadn’t encountered it since, “—but isn’t it time to move on by now? Get back to normal and put it all behind us, that’s what I say.”

No one spoke, but it had been days since Gwendoline received attention of any kind, and in her silly selfish vanity she mistook the girls’ honest grief for the silence of a captive audience, thrilling to her every word. “Why,” she began, tossing golden curls back across her shoulder, “I remember when I was young, and Mother said I might have a kitten for my own – but then Father forbade it, and I cried for _days_ as I mourned that kitten. It’s not quite the same thing now, of course, but—”

“I don’t care what anyone else says,” Darrell said, speaking up quite suddenly, “but if you don’t stop this minute, Gwen, I shall send you to Coventry for as long as I live.”

“And I too,” chimed in Jean. 

“I too—” Bill, and, “I too – I too – I too,” Sally and Mavis and Clarissa, even Daphne, until only Mary-Lou was left: that little mouse, trembling her lip before the fire. She rarely found the nerve to stand up against Gwendoline, and today of all days, when her natural drippiness and absence of backbone had been worsened even further by Alicia—

“I too,” said Mary-Lou, in a tiny voice. “I too,” she said, more strongly. “It isn’t kind at all, Gwen, what you’re saying – not to the other girls, but nor to Alicia, either. I shall send you to Coventry for the rest of term unless you stop it.”

For the rest of term! Little mouse Mary-Lou – who would have thought she had it in her? Not Gwendoline, who gaped at her in mute astonishment while the other girls murmured words of praise, and support and impressed encouragement. All _term_! – why, Gwendoline couldn’t go that long without someone in whom she could always find a ready audience. Her voice came back to her, although it was strangled a little by her shock. “Why, you couldn’t do it, Mary-Lou! You might say you will, but you won’t; you never could!”

“I can,” said little Mary-Lou, “and I shall.” And then she set her chin quite firmly, and turned away towards the fire. 

Gwendoline stared at her back. All around the common room, the other girls were silent – watching, except for Belinda, who was quickly sketching as she glanced up at Gwendoline. 

Well, Gwendoline had her audience; she might as well put it to some use. “I shall tell you what I think, then, if all of you are to be such frightful drips about it – I think it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person!”

Still no girl spoke, though Sally took her hand from Darrell’s shoulder. Belinda nudged Irene to show her the sketchbook. Both of them covered their mouths to muffle laughter, and Gwendoline’s temper flared again. 

“I think if you ask yourselves,” she said hotly, “if you really _ask_ yourselves, then I think you lot would jolly well realise it too; Alicia was rude and spiteful and a horrid bully, and if you ask me, I’d rather it was her. I’d _rather_ it was her!”

“Alicia was good and kind and warm to all her friends, and if you didn’t see that, Gwen, then that is because you never _were_ her friend – because you’re a petty, selfish girl who never thinks of anyone but herself; and that is the sort of girl Alicia scorned above all others.”

Darrell’s temper was as cold as ice for once, and it brought a chill into the common room. She didn’t move from Sally’s side, but Gwendoline’s cheeks reddened as surely as though she had been slapped. “I’d _rather_ it was her, I said! Rather her than any of you girls – and that’s not a cruel thing to say! Why, if anything, I am paying you a compliment—”

Without saying a word, Darrell turned on the sofa so that her back was facing Gwendoline. Sally copied, and then all around the common room so did the other girls: North Tower full of primly tied-back hair, the backs of heads, the brown backs of tunics with orange belts threaded through, and Gwendoline Mary in the middle of it all, nearly speechless with her passion. 

“Why – why, you pigs! You absolute pigs, each and every one of you – I shall see to it that you’re sorry, I don’t care how I do it, I _shall_ —”

“No one wants you here, Gwen.” Jean said it plainly, and somehow that was worse than any anger could have been. It was a simple fact, true and unadorned, and Jean said it so, in her dour Scottish way. “No one wants to see you, or to speak with you. Won’t you leave?”

Tears sprang to Gwendoline’s eyes. The room blurred and burned before her, and she fled before they heard her weep – before they heard her weep, and mistook her fury for sorrow; worse, before they mistook it for regret. She regretted none of it, and she refused to let any girl believe she did. 

 

+++

 

Gwendoline was not a good girl, nor a kind girl. She was not a clever girl, either; but it was unfortunate for the girls of Malory Towers that Gwendoline, when given adequate incentive, was capable of a certain kind of sly, malicious cunning. She never could learn her irregular verbs, and she struggled with her sums, and she was worse with a hockey stick than almost any other girl in the school – but she could plot, and she could scheme, and she could lie. 

Dinnertime came and went, and Gwendoline stayed alone in the dormy in what she imagined the other girls must see as a tremendous show of her disdain. After she had sobbed all her anger into her pillow, a new feeling began to stir inside her. It was blacker than fury and hotter than resentment; it churned and lurched inside Gwendoline’s spiteful little heart, and quite decisively she pulled the book out from her drawer. 

There was a lot of writing printed inside the covers. Before, Gwendoline hadn’t taken the time to read beyond the very first sentence, but now she spread the book in her lap and bent to study it with a concentration that many of her teachers would have been astonished to observe. 

The sky outside the dormy windows was dark before Gwendoline looked up again. “Are you there?” she asked the empty room. “Don’t ignore me if you are, or I shall—”

The creature appeared suddenly and soundlessly before her. 

“Good evening,” said Gwendoline, in a weak little voice that wanted desperately to sound firm. 

The creature leered like a jack-o’-lantern. “Good evening, Gwendoline Mary.”

Gwendoline took a deep breath. She was clutching her book very tightly. “I have been studying this,” she said. “And now I have some questions – which I shall ask, and you will answer.”

The creature leered some more. Gwendoline put her nose in the air and ignored it. 

“It says I can make people do things. Is that... all sorts of things? For instance, might I write – Betty Hill, apologise to Gwendoline Mary Lacey for the beastly way you’ve treated her all these years, out in the Main Court where everyone can hear it – and promise to give her your new tuck box to make up for it, the one with the tins of pineapple and the strawberry jam, and then treat her kindly and generously all the way until next week, when you sneak out to the pool at night for a spot of midwinter swimming, and slip on the rocks and—But all of this is only an example, of course,” Gwendoline said hastily. 

The creature’s leer seemed to widen, although perhaps Gwendoline imagined it. “You could get a little more specific,” it suggested. “Try getting some times and dates in there. For the best effects, you want detail in your details.”

Gwendoline thought about it. “Tuesday,” she decided, tucking a stray golden wisp behind her ear. “Just as an example, I mean – but Tuesday. Midnight on Tuesday. Jolly good. And this part here—” She tapped the page, and the creature floated nearer, craning its rictus smile down to peer over her shoulder. “If I were to write the names of two girls – or people, I mean; they wouldn’t have to be girls, as this is only an example – but if I _were_ to – say, for example, Mary-Lou Brown and Darrell Rivers – as an example, that is—”

“They’d both get it,” said the creature. “That what you were gonna ask? They’d both be affected, and you’d get them both safe and sound under your control.”

“Right-o,” said Gwendoline. For the first time in quite a while, her good spirits were beginning to return. She took a pencil from the little pile of school books stacked beside her bed. “That will be all, then.”

“I beg your pardon?” said the creature. 

“That will be all,” repeated Gwendoline. Without looking up, she waved an imperious hand in dismissal. “Off you go. Leave. Return to whatever you were doing. Does your kind have a servants’ quarters?”

“You do know I’m a god, don’t you?” inquired the creature, in a tone of mild curiosity. 

“That seems terribly unlikely,” said Gwendoline. “I feel quite sure Miss Spencer would have made some mention of it during morning prayers, if God were as common as you. Good- _bye_ ,” she said, quite firmly, and when she next looked up the creature was gone, and Gwendoline sat alone in the warmth of the light that burned above her bed, as layer upon layer of shadow fell criss-crossed in the growing gloom of the rest of the dormy, and she chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pencil. 

 

+++

 

Belinda was the first to return Gwendoline from Coventry. She did it at the start of Break one morning, before the girls had tumbled out of their maths classroom into the chilly corridors, and she did it quite magnificently. “Gwen! I’m sorry for blowing up at you like that; all the other girls were, and I was simply swept away. But here – won’t you take this for an apology?”

She held out her sketchbook. On the open page was a portrait of Gwendoline – but not scowling, as Belinda was wont to draw! Rather, this portrait gazed with a calm, confident eye towards an unseen goal, her silken hair loose and unplaited. 

“I burned the scowl book,” Belinda explained. “It was jolly mean of me to keep it, so it’s gone, now. Do you think you might forgive me?”

The other girls were gathered around them in astonishment. Gwendoline held the portrait up towards the light, and tilted the page, and hemmed and hawed with theatrical deliberation. At last she said, graciously condescending, “Oh, I suppose I might. Awfully nice of you, Belinda.”

“Oh, you _are_ a brick, Gwen,” said Belinda, with a great sigh of relief. Irene seized her arm and tugged her hurriedly away, and that was that – until the incident in the art workshop the next day, but that was only an accident, and terribly unfortunate, and Gwendoline was first among the mourners that time, and quick both to lament her good kind friend and to tell anyone who would listen of the portrait Belinda had given her only yesterday, and here it was, if anyone wished to see, and wasn’t the likeness splendid? 

And it was. Belinda had had a talent: it really was. 

 

+++

 

It was a tremendous power Gwendoline held: she understood this. And a power like hers should not be used lightly: she understood this, too. And so she swore to use it only under the most extreme conditions – those conditions when there was no alternative but grave catastrophe, or terrible misfortune, or immense humiliation, or damage to her pride, or being ordered to plait her shining silken hair, or being jeered for flinching at the ice cold water in the dormy’s taps, or being startled while studying so that she blotted her laboriously completed English grammar comp. and had to rewrite it all from scratch, or being called _darling Gwendoline_ in that particular sing-song tone she found infuriating, for how it reminded her of her own mother’s sweet tone when she would call her, lovingly, by the same name. 

The authorities closed down the school some weeks before the Easter hols. 

Gwendoline cared very little. The other girls had always been quick to remind her that she embodied none of the qualities of a proper Malory Towers girl, after all: she was not a girl of whom Malory Towers might be proud, and she was not a girl whom the school might consider one of its successes. 

She was not a good girl, nor a kind girl; but she was a very, very powerful girl, and she was quite content.

 

 


End file.
